V x

† † †

4 JANUARY 1970

Darling Tilde,

I’m really quite low and beyond anything.

I lay here all this morning doing absolutely nothing. The dog lay with me—he’s a sweeter, stupider version of me. I didn’t have the energy to make myself lunch. I couldn’t be bothered taking the dog for a walk. I’ve retreated into a permanent Sunday. Could’ve stared at the wall all morning, listening to the wind and the screeching of the washing line.

The house feels vaguely dead these days, as when no one goes into a room for months: you can smell the neglect and abandonment. Outside there is unmown grass, soggy egg-cartons and cardboard boxes. Inside: filthy ashtrays, a leaking fridge. A piano to be dusted. Plants I have abandoned.

There is a terrible dog urine smell too, which has me down on my hands and knees sniffing the floor like a mad woman. If that creates a comic picture for you, I don’t mean it to, I’m not trying to be funny or amuse you: it is actually me, going slightly mad all by myself here.

A rose-thorn has got into my knuckle and it is all swollen.

I’m depressed, fed up, exhausted. All I want to do is just sleep and have someone take care of me.

I know, I know, I mustn’t slip into this mood, as it will just take me down down down and then leave me with all the horrible work of coming back up again.

I will pick myself up and dust myself off.

Are you getting my mail, Tilde?

Love Veda

† † †

20 FEBRUARY 1970

Dear Tilde,

Last night I dreamt I walked past a man buried up to his neck in concrete. He turned his head back and forth as I walked past and whistled at me, like we were in cahoots, like it was just a matter of time.

I have a headache. (Perhaps that is the first of the concrete being laid?) The headache causes me to furrow my brow so now I am acquiring an even deeper crevice in my forehead. I look at smooth-browed women, on the street, in shops. I’d like to stop and talk to them and ask them how they do it. ‘What cream do you use? What exercises do you do before the mirror?’ But it seems that in order to have such a brow, I would need to stop thinking all together. Is ‘not thinking’ really the remedy? Our mother’s brow was prematurely wrinkled by the sun and the weather. She never worried about such things as smooth foreheads or greying hair or thwarted ambitions. And that is why she has lived a large, wholesome, satisfying life with only one of her children causing her pain.